Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Democrat Obama said the current crisis was the "final verdict on the failed economic policies of the last eight years” that President Bush pursued and were "supported by Senator McCain.”

He contended that Bush, McCain and others had favored deregulation of the financial industry, predicting that would "let markets run wild and prosperity would rain down on all of us. It didn’t happen.”

No, Mr Obama, this crisis was not caused by freedom but by oppression.

McCain’s pledge to have the government help individual homeowners avoid foreclosure went considerably beyond the $700 billion bailout that recently cleared Congress.

"I would order the secretary of the Treasury to immediately buy up the bad home loan mortgages in America and renegotiate at the new value of those homes at the diminished value of those homes and let people be able to make those payments and stay in their homes,” he said.

"Is it expensive? Yes. But we all know, my friends, until we stabilize home values in America, we’re never going to start turning around and creating jobs and fixing our economy, and we’ve got to get some trust and confidence back to America.”

Mr McCain, how is letting people who can't afford homes continue to buy them going to stabilize home values? How is sending Americans the message that if they can't - or won't - pay their bills, the government will bail them out going to solve anything?

Both are wrong: this crisis is the direct result of the government's attempts to use the economy to force its values on us. Neither of them has the guts or the inclination to challenge the government's promotion of altruism.

2 comments:

Actually, the problem has to do with the banks not trusting each other. Why? Not because of the mortgage crisis, which set off the problem that was put into place by Credit Default Swap market a 62 trillion dollars market, which has no regulation. Basically it became a Ponzi scheme that has started to meltdown, taking the whole world economy with it. Now because there has been no oversight between the banks, Banks, Hedge Funds are falling like dead flies. We should have learned from the Great Depression that we can't allow speculation by our banking system. A lesson we will again have to learn. Socialism and Capitalism suffer from the same problem, a very stunted understanding of human nature. That is why a best system is the good of American Pragmatism and Mixed Capitalism.

Ernesto - What is a non-stunted understanding of human nature? To blame the crisis on deregulation is to assume that leaders of banks and hedge funds have no desire to be rational managers who know that the best way to achieve profits is by voluntary trade to mutual benefit.

What good is there in pragmatism? Pragmatism is the rejection of principles, which is why I reject it on principle. Mixed Capitalism? If you're referring to a mixture of freedom and controls, that's what we have now, and the freedom part is fading fast under the weight of all those controls - and the morality that motivates them.

What we need is complete laissez-faire Capitalism uncompromised by any controls AND a morality of rational self-interest to defend it!

About this blog

The human race is divided into those who believe it is right to go after what they really want out of life, and those who don't.

The real battle today is between selfishness and altruism. This is the core of every conflict going on in the world today, not politics and economics. Politics and economics are not causes, but effects, the underlying cause of which is, in fact, morality.

For the record, I side with selfishness. As far as I'm concerned, being able to live my own life for my own sake is the only thing that gives Freedom any real meaning.